Taylor & Derrida
All,
Just trying to get through some back-reading here. The first time I read this book, I thought Taylor's take on deconstruction was a bit too hard:
[Derrida's] critique is, in the final analysis, ineffective; deconstruction changes nothing. While exposing systems and structures as incomplete and perhaps repressive, deconstruction inevitably leaves them in place. This is not merely because deconstruction involves theoretical analyses instead of practical action but also because of the specific conclusions reached by the theoretical critique. Instead of showing how totalizing structures can actually be changed, deconstruction demonstrates that the tendency to totalize can never be overcome and, thus, that repressive structures are inescapable. For Derrida and his followers, all we can do is to join in the Sisyphean struggle to undo what cannot be undone. (emphasis original 65)
Is this the case? Can we assume that deconstruction leaves structures in place if the place around them has been "illuminated"? Hmm... that might not make sense... is a metaphysical/ideological structure unchanged by my awareness of it? Wouldn't my becoming aware of its presence change its being and operation--does a system change when a part becomes aware of the whole?
Ultimately I do not feel ready to answer these questions. They remind me of the questions that arise in cultural studies, specifically those raised by Sloterdijk (spelling?): the cynicism that comes with false consciousness. Or Kristen's saying: "paralysis through analysis."
Finally I wonder if Taylor's take on Derrida doesn't in some way reflect the vibe that Geof was groovin' on:
In Taylor's terms, I think that process-topics still lend themselves to a sense of "embranchements" (175).
The sense of embranchement seems to me to be a building towards higher levels of complexity, rather than finding what is complex already in a given note.
[Geof, I wonder, isn't a single note itself a complex system of sound? How do you distinguish levels of complexity from depth?] Is Taylor still relying on a kind of structuralist notion of truth that prevents him from recognizing the significance of Derrida's perspective?
Just trying to get through some back-reading here. The first time I read this book, I thought Taylor's take on deconstruction was a bit too hard:
[Derrida's] critique is, in the final analysis, ineffective; deconstruction changes nothing. While exposing systems and structures as incomplete and perhaps repressive, deconstruction inevitably leaves them in place. This is not merely because deconstruction involves theoretical analyses instead of practical action but also because of the specific conclusions reached by the theoretical critique. Instead of showing how totalizing structures can actually be changed, deconstruction demonstrates that the tendency to totalize can never be overcome and, thus, that repressive structures are inescapable. For Derrida and his followers, all we can do is to join in the Sisyphean struggle to undo what cannot be undone. (emphasis original 65)
Is this the case? Can we assume that deconstruction leaves structures in place if the place around them has been "illuminated"? Hmm... that might not make sense... is a metaphysical/ideological structure unchanged by my awareness of it? Wouldn't my becoming aware of its presence change its being and operation--does a system change when a part becomes aware of the whole?
Ultimately I do not feel ready to answer these questions. They remind me of the questions that arise in cultural studies, specifically those raised by Sloterdijk (spelling?): the cynicism that comes with false consciousness. Or Kristen's saying: "paralysis through analysis."
Finally I wonder if Taylor's take on Derrida doesn't in some way reflect the vibe that Geof was groovin' on:
In Taylor's terms, I think that process-topics still lend themselves to a sense of "embranchements" (175).
The sense of embranchement seems to me to be a building towards higher levels of complexity, rather than finding what is complex already in a given note.
[Geof, I wonder, isn't a single note itself a complex system of sound? How do you distinguish levels of complexity from depth?] Is Taylor still relying on a kind of structuralist notion of truth that prevents him from recognizing the significance of Derrida's perspective?
posted by Insignificant Wrangler at 1:12 PM
3 Comments:
Taylor's take on Derrida in -The Moment- is different from how he is used in earlier efforts such as -Erring- and -Nots- ... so, when Taylor is hard on Derrida, perhaps we might say which-Taylor?
(Also: As I follow the literature, deconstruction --particularly as it was practiced in Engl depts-- had become somewhat formuliac, and we can only assume that Taylor wants a different sense for his STRANGE LOOPS than constructivism, deconstruction, or simulacra (72) ...
This is Taylor, becoming-Taylor, and I think in his interviews he addresses which books of his he considers to more complex than his work-a-day philosophical texts that he assembled when he un/just had to produce work that would be embraced by the academy ...
Mark, I'll risk a sense of the single note ... might it be thought of a "complex system of sound"?
Yes, but I want to read the sense of this complexity across Deleuze's sense of the REFRAIN.
For me, the chapter on the refrain is useful because it gets at a sense of BLOCs that are important for my diss. It is an extension of P.Boulez's work that I won't go into here ...
As I understand the refrain (ritournelle) it is a "single thing" that has three aspects that are all caught up in the sense of SOMETIMES, SOMETIMES, SOMETIMES ...
Somtimes is a "territorial assemblage," and in returning to SOMETIMES ::
"Sometimes one goes from chaos to the threshold of a territorial assemblage: directional components, INFRA-assemblage. Sometimes one organizes the assemblage: dimensional components, INTRA-assemblage. Sometimes one goes from leaves the territorial assemblage for other assemblages, or for somewhere else entirely: INTERASSEMBALGE, components of passage or escape."
Now, this is all D&G's way of talking about FOLDING, UNFOLDING, and ENFOLDING ...
Taylor does this, too, but in a different register ...
We might leave the Taylor-assemblage and move towards a Deleuze-assemblage, for example.
... a sense of this single-note sometimes --which is NOT necessarily a question of "depth" as you put in Mark-- is on the SURFACE that might be found in Jack Black's -Tenacious D- album called "One Note Song."
I use this in class, and I couple it w/ the sense of a "single note" that Charlie Chaplin "plays" by way of a piece of wood that is caught in a city grate, which is -too- a play of SURFACES.
... how this works w/ Derrida, I would I can't say.
The sense that I would risk here is by way of Deleuze.
Okay, I went back to the Taylor's introduction --as I haven't read this since Thomas's class-- and I see now the importance of Taylor to the VISUAL ARTS.
And now I think I understand Taylor's perspective on Derrida.
(Mark's questions initially got me thinking in terms of "SONIC BRICKS" that D&G discuss by way of the their chapter in -TP-, "Of the Refrain.")
Where Derrida fits into all this is that Taylor sees his work as offering something of a corrective to an omission that he sees going on in Derrida's work:
"While Derrida repeatedly writes about drawing, painting, and architecture, his preoccupation w/ textuality leads him to overlook distinctive features of the visual arts."
He notes that Derrida's work concentrates on BLINDNESS, and suggests that "Derrida's ambivalence toward the visual arts results from his indebtedness to the aniconic Jewish religious and theological tradition" (7).
Now I see that Taylor's work is offering something of a corrective to this, and though he too certainly concentrates on the TEXTUAL in his earlier series on Derrida --Altariety, Nots, A/theology-- there are glimpses in those books of the VISUAL ARTS that -The Moment of Complexity- has become.
(One instance in particular comes from his consideration of his daughters mural of GAP advertisements in -Nots- ... It is worth saying that he plays right along w/ Derrida in thinking of how the word GAP functions in terms of its French form, 'ecart' (i think), and that for all of his movement against D in this work, these earlier work are, again, quite different.)
... So, what I might say about Derrida, in relation to Deleuze, is that for Taylor (at least), Derrida's sense of the visual arts is that he is more interested in aiconic traditions. Taylor's work, insofar as it offers a corrective to this, is perhaps more STRUCTURAL than the sense of sonic bricks forwarded by D&G, and this, too, perhaps gets at Mucklebauer's reading of the differences between Deleuze's interest in FRANCIS BACON and Taylor's interest in CHUCK CLOSE.
Close --whose signature plays nicely-- , for Taylor, plays textually but also extends a structural visual art.
Bacon --whose signature is, perhaps, a matter of indifference to Deleuze-- works through a sense of twisted smears and screams, and gives, perhaps, --if I might follow out the sense of another of my posts-- a particular Spinozistic twist to D's Kierkagaard.
It's worth noting that for Taylor, his early work is invested in Kierkagaard and Hegel. For Deleuze, his figures are primarily Bergson, Spinoza, Nietzsche.
Derrida's placement in relation to these conceptual persona is different, of course, but of primary interest here is that Taylor is not necessarily being "too hard," he is attempting to bend the trajectory of philosophical-theological study to the visual arts.
Or, in another sense, towards his daughter's mural of advertisements.
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